A post on GovLoop by Gadi Ben-Yehuda led me to “Using Online Tools to Engage – and be Engaged by – The Public” by Matt Leighninger which is a new report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Whilst it’s a glossy, it is also well thought out and laid out, and presents current research into the use of social media in government very succinctly. The report presents a number of scenarios where government practitioners may find themselves requiring public input, and then describe a mix of ten different approaches that may be found useful in attempting to get citizen engagement, along with highlighting a number of real examples from across the world. Some of the solutions offered are, of course, sold by IBM but other suppliers and examples of some free products are also provided.

Scrolling through the PDF of the book, which is available hardcopy too, I fell over a UK example that I initially didn’t recognise, however on Googling it, it all became clear. The example was of Citizenscape, “a web platform that connects existing social websites, such as community forums and sites like Facebook and Twitter, to participatory tools such as ePetitions, webcasts, or consultations. Citizenscape is designed to provide an immediate picture of what online users in a community are talking about.” The developers of Citizenscape are Public-i, who have for some time been providing webcasting of meetings for local authorities in the UK. The chief executive of Public-i is Catherine Howe, who is also a PhD researcher employing a blog entitled “Curious Catherine“, as a research diary. I met Catherine through the webcasting product and have occasionally compared notes on the griefs and joys involved in doing a PhD.

Reading the blog I’m now aware that she’s using action research as the methodology, so she has even more of my sympathy, having used that myself. Hence the circles within circles, having started off at GovLoop and rotated around to the latest blog posts of an acquaintance.

Steve Ressler, founder of GovLoop, might have some self-interest involved when he tries to promote the use of social media in government in a piece in Government Technology, but he’s still very correct in a couple of his five points to avoid.

Blocking use rather than setting guidelines can be a big mistake as “when Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook stock while its own analysts were blocked from the site and couldn’t do research on the company”.

Another good message from Steve is “think of it in terms of economic development — a forward-thinking digital government is attractive to growing employers and the creative-class workers they’re trying to recruit”.

There are still lots of councils and government bodies blocking social media and too few with a well thought out policy on using it.

With the current UK central government budget constraints it may be very difficult to encourage those responsible to focus upon engagement with citizens or even direct government ministers to better engage with local government, but a post from America on GovLoop that points to the Californian Institute for Local Government may offer some salutary lessons?

These ten ‘Principles of Local Government Public Engagement’ might be recycled throughout government, not just local, towards improving governance at little or minimal cost. Here they are unabridged:

1. Inclusive Planning: The planning and design of a public engagement process includes input from appropriate local officials as well as from members of intended participant communities.

2. Transparency: There is clarity and transparency about public engagement process sponsorship, purpose, design, and how decision makers will use the process results.

3. Authentic Intent: A primary purpose of the public engagement process is to generate public views and ideas to help shape local government action or policy, rather than persuade residents to accept a decision that has already been made.

4. Breadth of Participation: The public engagement process includes people and viewpoints that are broadly reflective of the local agency’s population of affected residents.

5. Informed Participation: Participants in the public engagement process have information and/or access to expertise consistent with the work that sponsors and conveners ask them to do.

6. Accessible Participation: Public engagement processes are broadly accessible in terms of location, time, and language, and support the engagement of residents with disabilities.

7. Appropriate Process: The public engagement process utilizes one or more discussion formats that are responsive to the needs of identified participant groups; and encourage full, authentic, effective and equitable participation consistent with process purposes. This may include relationships with existing community forums.

8. Authentic Use of Information Received: The ideas, preferences, and/or recommendations contributed by the public are documented and seriously considered by decision makers.

9. Feedback to Participants: Local officials communicate ultimate decisions back to process participants and the broader public, with a description of how the public input was considered and used.

10. Evaluation: Sponsors and participants evaluate each public engagement process with the collected feedback and learning shared broadly and applied to future engagement efforts.

Not overly keen on performance measures, per se, but as a sometime contributor and member of GovLoop, I was intrigued by a recent submission on that very matter. It’s a presentation by Laura Wesley that I found quite interesting, especially since she appears to have built up the concept with a deal of co-production.

I believe the presentation and theory worthy of wider discussion. It’s a topic that’s been frequently discussed on the IDeA Communities of Practice and other forums but seems to have dried up a bit recently…

Although the GovLoop site is mainly for US public workers they are very welcoming of those from the UK, so give it a visit you may find it interesting.

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About me

The blogger is Mick Phythian, a Research Associate at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. and former ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire, England. He was also a founder member of the Local CIO Council and regional Chair of Socitm.

Any opinions expressed on this weblog are purely those of the author.

He is not the Great Emancipator! The Great Emancipator was President Abraham Lincoln. The blog is so-called because some people perceive e-government, transformational government or, heaven forbid, government to be the emancipator of us all...